Month: May 2014

• This week in classical trolling: Is all music other than classical music dumb? asks Redditor prior to unceremonious evisceration.
• Watch as a violin string in “slow” motion vibrates very, very fast.
• How to make a timpani sound like a NASCAR race (foam domes & tank tops not included).
• Any self-respecting musician knows to bring a pencil (not pen) to rehearsal.
• How do you get Latinx kids into classical music? or any kids for that matter? (or anybody, seriously?).
• I called shenanigans on this clip but apparently it’s real.
• This guy playing Paganini while biking is also very real.
• Billboard real-time Twitter charts let you see what’s hot this second, like “Black Bruce Wayne.”
• Singer Joyce DiDonato at Juilliard commencement: “We are all deserving of a life that overflows with immense possibility, improbable beauty and relentless truth.” Nooge to that.

I’ll be damned if David Byrne didn’t just hit the nail on the head. He wrote a short ramble about Des Moines, Iowa, ostensibly a lame-o city in the middle of flyover country. Byrne discovers actual human life there, real people making a scene for themselves, making their city a destination. Breweries, distilleries, restaurants, art spaces, music, a bike scene — all of it is taking off like a California brushfire. What’s more, a Certified Brooklynite (TM) decided to move there in order to create something called the Des Moines Social Club, housing a “restaurant, bar, theater, performance space, classrooms, and even a culinary school.” Damnation.

As a kid forced to go to DSM on the regular it seemed like an okay town. There were coffee shops, an endless farmer’s market, various non-Blockbuster video stores and — most important of all — the summertime Ruan Grand Prix where they shut down the city so cars could race at insane speeds around too-close spectators.

The point Byrne makes here isn’t just, Gee-whiz, slack-jawed farmers got it together! He’s thankfully not that kind of jerk or simpleton. Byrne gets at an attitude, a swagger that DSM and other supposedly middle-of-nowhere, nothing-going-on towns have that has nothing to do with effete coast-dwellers. A city in the crosshairs of I-80 and -35 boasts a major opera company, a symphony orchestra, schools like Drake U. (to study your sister’s favorite rapper), and the other trappings we demand in our supposed great, big cities.

Anybody anywhere can be on that locally-sourced, artisanal toast tip and still not create any sort of meaningful scene. What’s important is mustering a critical mass of folks who want something better, who are dying to make music and art and food and don’t care about where and how they do it. Get a mat, some ropes & a bell, and start wrestling some matches.

“Des Moines is a f*cking parking lot” a friend’s dad told me one time, and he did not mean it in the sense that it was easy to find parking. Now it sounds like something changed. Take a page from the DSM playbook, do your thing in your place, and get other people to come along with you.

• David Finckel likes to travel, says NYT. “I’m a cellist, not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.” Noted.
• Check out this manifesto by the University of Maryland.
• Hilary Hahn on practice hygiene and the fabled work-life balance.
• My practice is way more like this.
• Call me maestro: Mendelssohn Museum in Leipzig lets you conduct a virtual orchestra.
• Conductor or automaton? Who knows anymore.
• The Met Opera Orchestra players discover #socialmedia, or “sosh meed” as I’m told the kids say these days.
• Monty Python serves up the 20 most unusual deaths of composers.

What are you up to tonight? Do you live in Cambridge or the greater Boston area? Most importantly, do you like music?

Members of my orchestra, Cambridge Philharmonic, are playing at the Middlesex Lounge as part of the electronic Together Festival. The performance is a showcase for String & Fader records.

If you have an interest — nay, a keen interest — in music by living composers, some of whom will stand next to you drinking Pisco Sours during the performance, then this is for you.

Doors are at 7 PM, and music starts shortly after.

I’ll see you there.

A new study indicates humiliation could be the strongest of human emotions trumping sadness, disgust, surprise, etc. Just sit and think about that. Of all the things that happen to us, humiliation ranks at the very top. If you remember something like it was yesterday, there’s a non-trivial chance that on that date, at that time, you endured just a tinge (or way, way more) of embarrassment.

Humiliation is a constant, nagging fear for high-wire music performers. Don’t practice before a lesson? Get dressed down by your teacher. Miss notes at an orchestra practice? Get singled out by the conductor. For god’s sake, we have masterclasses where students’ inadequacies are put on display for a captive audience! Suddenly I’m feeling flush. Our beloved musicians fall victim to symptoms of nerve-wracking performances: sweaty palms, shaking hands, chest and muscle tightness, tunnel vision. It’s like a list of Cialis side effects.

Nobody wants to look like an ass. When you get out on that stage anything can happen. Part of the reason audiences go to shows is to see whether the performer can pull it off — that horn solo in Ein Heldenleben, the violin acrobatics of Symphonie Espagnole. Will she fall flat on her face? Can she survive??? As sports fans we like our triumphs & failures clearly defined. Ditto music

In 1962, chemistry wizard James Black found a new medicinal treatment for patients with heart disease. Black synthesized propranolol and pronethalol in his lab, and he called them “beta-blockers” for the way they suppressed the body’s fight-or-flight response. Captain Black’s invention helped patients with hypertension or a history of heart attacks to avoid heart arrhythmias or worse. It bought the patient some breathing room — folks mere steps away from a widowmaker got a new lease on life.

So it just so happens the symptoms that Dr. Black helped patients avoid are some of the very symptoms that affect our beloved entertainers — the aforementioned sweaty palms and muscle tightness, the waves of nerves a tough performance can provoke. And wouldn’t you know it, doctors broke the walls down and prescribed beta blockers for performers. No numbers exist on beta blocker usage among classical musicians, but suffice to say, anecdotally, they get some play.

I tried beta blockers when I was 21. I was pretty sure they weren’t working — I waited to perform, frantic and scatter-brained like normal. But the minute I tuned up I knew something was up. Minimal sweat. No bow shakes. Deep (not necessarily profound) relaxation. Afterwards, friends told me I sounded great. (They didn’t need to go out of their way, either.) Hard to argue with that feedback. I will not lie to you, it made performing 20 percent easier out of the gate. Eventually my prescription lapsed and I went back to performing the sweaty, jumpy way.

When you poll Americans our fear of public speaking outranks our fear of death. Why do we get so nerved up? It is our pathological aversion to humiliation. It’s so obvious it’s ridiculous to type or say. But we can’t stand being made the fool, let alone humiliating ourselves in front of hundreds/thousands/millions

Beta blockers afford a small amount of control in a fluid and unpredictable situation. Other things work too — I know people who down a beer or a cocktail before playing, others smoke that medicinal, and there’s always natural remedies — but what harm, really, are we talking about here?

Would you be disappointed finding out that your heroes — Jay Friedman, Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin, Leontyne Price — were dosed up on propranolol on the regular? Does the use of the performance-enhancing drugs make the high wire seem a little lower, a little less threatening — and maybe … less exciting?

My contention is this. If you are feeling the music you’re feeling it. Whether or not your musical gods get fixed up beforehand doesn’t affect your good time. (But you may stop and wonder now.) The NFL doesn’t test for Human Growth Hormone. The NBA has a laughable anti-marijuana policy (be easy, Michael Beasley). Somehow we’re able still to enjoy both. We may not be able to avoid getting our asses handed to us by imperious teachers in lessons and masterclasses, but at least there’s one simple way, if you want it, to keep that strongest of human emotions at bay when push comes to shove.

• ¡Osmo! Minnesota Orchestra has its conductor again.
• A classical instrument lending library.
• Sinfini Music whipped up the Top 20 Pianists of All Time, just to stoke your seething hatred for lists.
• The Seattle Symphony is going to do a classical version of Baby Got Back with Sir Mix-A-Lot.
• Just like your favorite rapper, Daniel Barenboim now has his own boutique classical label called PERAL.
• The BBC Proms is learning how to Photoshop.